Rossini - Guillaume Tell (Rossini Opera Festival, 2013 - Blu-ray)

Gioachino Rossini - Guillaume Tell

Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro - 2013

Michele Mariotti, Graham Vick, Nicola Alaimo, Juan Diego Flórez, Marina Rebeka, Simon Orfilia, Amanda Forsythe, Luca Tittoto, Simone Alberghini, Allesandro Luciano, Celso Albelo, Wojtek Gierlach, Veronica Simeoni

Decca - Blu-ray

Rossini's final opera Guillaume Tell is a work of tremendous scale and ambition that even today still requires huge musical, singing and stage resources to do real justice to it. The blending of the Italian opera form that the composer had done so much to define is taken here to a new level with introduction of French opera traditions that practically invent the style of Grand Opera. For its production at Pesaro in 2013 the Rossini Opera Festival invited Graham Vick to take on the challenge of directing the work in a way that would retain its immense power and status, but at the same time present it in a new light. Inevitably with Vick, it becomes almost an entirely new opera.

It take a while to get your bearings here in the specially constructed stage at the Arena Adriatica in Pesaro for the 2013 Guillaume Tell, if you ever even get your bearings at all. You're not exactly in 14th century Switzerland, that's for sure. The opening scene in fact looks like it takes place on a sleek cruise liner, one where the divisions between the rich and the poor voyagers are nonetheless dressed like their counterparts on the Titanic. It at least marks a clear contrast between the Austrian aggressors of the original story and the oppressed people of Guillaume Tell's canton in Switzerland. Soldiers dressed in Austrian uniforms keep an eye on the natives, who look like they are cleaning the decks, while the nobles in their finery brush them aside. It's hard to relate to any of the specifics of the original setting.

The lack of specific location or period is somewhat unsettling. It could just as easily be a large temple, or a posh hotel with exquisite views of the surrounding Alps. Vick doesn't believe however that you can put nature up on the stage, so makes no attempt with the crudely painted backdrops to suggest anything naturalistic. As the clear distinctions between the rich and the poor and the clenched fist on the drop curtain indicate, the director clearly wants to use the stage as a "blank canvas" to make a bold statement on power and oppression, freedom and revolution, one that is bigger than a mythological story of uncertain origin. It's also an approach that corresponds with Rossini's impressive, almost Wagnerian musical efforts to tie mythology to larger questions of nationalism and identity.

Vick's modern Bayreuth-like stylisations might seem out of place in Rossini, but conductor Michele Mariotti also seems to recognise the pre-Wagnerian force and dynamic that is there in the score as well. Act I plays out almost like Der fliegende Holländer, and heard this way, you can really get a sense of how far mature Rossini has come from the bel canto and opera seria constructions/constrictions of his earlier works. There's still a danger in this work of overplaying and being drawn into heavy-handed and obscure symbolism that is out of place with the real intent of the piece. Vick's approach here looks similar to his War and Peace for the Mariinsky, but as Act II of Guillaume Tell here becomes a "workers of the world unite" against slavery and oppression, you have doubts that it's enough to just reductively and abstractly treat the issues here are nothing more than a class struggle.

By Act III however, Vick's sinister imagery starts to really sink into your bones and show how it supports those bigger questions. Arnold and Mathilde's love for each other and the sacrifices they have to make must be more than just a romantic interlude added for variety and convention. Vick's production shows that it relates to wider social issues, to family, to national pride, and even to grander questions of what life means. Act III of course also brings up such matters in a way that - as seen by the recent controversial Covent Garden production - are difficult to handle effectively without overstating or diminishing the intent. There's no rape scene, but the rich Gessler's humiliation of the 'poor' in Vick's production still has an edge of sexual abuse and humiliation that seems to strike the balance somewhat better.

It's an important point to make because it's the key moment where the occupying forces overstep the mark. Tell's defiance and his feat of skill as a bowman further undermines Gessler's credibility and the people start to believe in themselves. Vick's production, as strange and abstract as it often is, never descends into absurdity but remains connected to those very real and significant human emotions, and that makes all the difference. Of equal importance to keeping the potentially overblown drama meaningful is Michele Mariotti's fantastic conducting and the outstanding performance of the orchestra that captures all the detail and sophistication of Rossini's score, driving it forward with tremendous energy.

No less challenging in Guillaume Tell is finding the right singers for a range of challenging roles. Arguably the role of Arnold Melchtal is the most difficult role to cast, and it's a challenge even for as consummate a Rossini tenor as Juan Diego Flórez. Flórez is traditionally better suited to light comedy Rossini, but there is a darkening in his voice occurring now that gives him the opportunity to approach the darker, more dramatic tenor roles. It's still a bit of a stretch, but Flórez does remarkably well. Next to that is Mathilde, and Marina Rebeka is nothing short of phenomenal here, her voice equally strong and projected out across the whole range, the high notes in particular ringing clear and firm. Rebeka pretty much carries the otherwise fairly static Act II, making it much more interesting that it might otherwise be.

There is however not a single weak link in the singing, which in this work is really something. Nicola Alaimo has good presence as Tell, not as strong in projection, but capable of navigating the switch between intimate sensitivity and pride spilling over into furious anger with real conviction. Amanda Forsythe shows how much a strong account of Jemmy can contribute to the work as a whole and Luca Tittoto gives us a fearsome Gessler who nonetheless has more personality than just being an evil villain. Personality is what this production really has going for it, Paul Brown's sets, Vick's direction, a uniformly strong cast and particularly Mariotti's conducting, really exploring the true worth of Guillaume Tell.

The 2013 Rossini Opera Festival production of Guillaume Tell is released on DVD and BD by Decca. The four-hour long work transfers well to the screen. It would seem that considerable work has been done to make the problematic acoustics of the basketball stadium of the Arena Adriatica more suitable for opera performance. The audio tracks here, in uncompressed PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 are astonishingly good, and the bright stage production is filmed well. There is a short extra feature on the disc exploring Graham Vick's production and the challenges of putting it on stage. The Blu-ray is region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.

Rossini - Matilde di Shabran

Gioachino Rossini - Matilde di Shabran

Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, 2012

Michele Mariotti, Mario Martone, Juan Diego Flórez, Olga Peretyatko, Paolo Bordogna, Chiara Chialli, Simon Orfilia, Anna Goryachova, Marco Filippo Romano, Nicola Alaimo, Giorgio Misseri, Ugo Rosati, Dario Sallusto

Decca - Blu-ray

Whatever you might think about the plausibility or the dramatic merits of the plot of Matilde di Shabran, musically it's an absolute delight, with an abundance of melody and a number of meaty singing roles. It might be Rossini on autopilot, composing at breakneck speed and getting full value out of a few simple rehashed tunes repeated at a variety of speeds, but the fact that he manages nonetheless to fashion an entertaining musical entertainment out of the most meagre and ludicrous of librettos with limited means is near miraculous. At least, it is when its potential is fully realised at the Rossini Opera Festival by some of the best Rossinian performers in the world today.

No-one however could possibly lay any kind of claim for there being anything like a credible plot or even credible characters in Matilde di Shabran, but if writing for entertainment alone is justification enough for an opera, then that's certainly what Rossini delivers here. Corradino ("Ironheart") might be a fearsome warrior ("a lion, an ogre, a devil") and a heartless hater of women who resides in a dark castle on a hill, who issues dire pronouncements to strike fear into the hearts of the local villagers, but he finds his power-base crumble when faced with a disarming creature of the opposite sex. There is however no Bluebeard-like dark cautionary fairy-tale here. It's not some psychological exploration of the fatal attraction of female passions and the dangerous allure of masculine power. (It might be interesting to see Claus Guth let loose on this, but even he would find this work a challenge).

The woman who is going to storm Corradino's castle (metaphorically speaking) is of course Matilde di Shabran. Matilde has been left as a ward to Corradino by her father on his deathbed. Quite why the old man did this isn't entirely clear, but clearly he must have been insane or in a delirium if he thought it was a great idea to entrust his only daughter to a notorious hater of women, a man devoted entirely to war, havoc, slaughter and inflicting as much misery and fear into the world as is humanly possible. Corradino is however clearly good at his job, receiving tributes of vegetables from cowering villagers, showing his merciless character by having an unwary poet called Isidoro locked up for straying on his property and just because he finds his name effeminate. He's a baddie all right, this Corradino, and he chases Isidoro around the stage just to scare him a bit more.

There's a good hour of all this (comic-)macho posturing before Matilde arrives on the scene, or even before we hear a female voice in the opera. Even then, it's a mezzo-soprano singing the trouser-role of Edoardo, the son of Corradino's arch-enemy Don Rodrigo, who is locked up in the dungeon. When Matilde does turn up on the scene, Corradino obviously wants to slaughter this hateful but curiously attractive example of the fairer sex, but - what is this? Something stays his hand. Could it be love? Could the Ironheart be melting? Well, much to the delight of the scheming Countess, it's only a temporary aberration, since his mistrust of all women is proven to be justified when it appears that Matilde has released his prisoner Edoardo from chains. Faithless woman! So why then does Corradino still feel such pangs at the betrayal and even a hint of regret that he has had her executed...?

If you find that you're fully entertained for over three and a half hours by the thin ludicrous plot that passes for drama (or indeed comedy), then it's almost entirely down to Rossini's galloping, spinning and spiralling score. He may have written Matilde di Shabran in haste - even more than usual - to fulfil a commission, but you'd almost think that the speed of writing has found its way into the score, which rattles along at that familiar Rossinian pace, rattling out variations of the theme in a manner that works nonetheless in perfect accompaniment with the over-the-top situations and the behaviour of the characters. That of course is also expressed in the singing, and accordingly you'll find some of the composer's most extravagant bel canto writing here.

All of which wouldn't amount to much however if we didn't have the right people in place at the Rossini Opera Festival to make this 2013 performance of the work compellingly and thrillingly entertaining. Really, you only need to see the names Juan Diego Flórez and Olga Peretyatko here to know it's going to be sung as well as it can be. Even then though, both singers more than surpass expectations. Dramatically they don't have a lot to work with, and there's unfortunately a lot of mugging going on, but Flórez's singing is still without peer in this tenor register and he never once falters in the extremely difficult passages, even making them look easy. The same goes for the gorgeous songbird flutterings of Olga Peretyatko's flawless coloratura, but her unparalleled brilliance of this type of Rossini role is evident in her entire performance. It would be apparent to anyone that you are witnessing two of the best Rossini performers in the world here at their best.

You would be hard pressed to find flaws in the other performances either with Paolo Bordogna providing a good comic turn as Isidoro, Anna Goryachova a fine Edoardo and Chiara Chialli a suitably mean Countess. Simon Orfilia also makes a good impression as Ginardo, but is rather wasted in such a small role. Michele Mariotti races the orchestra through the work with no great subtlety, which is exactly the manner in which it should be played. There's not a lot to say about Mario Martone's direction or the stage design other than it's functional and perfectly suitable. The setting is generically period, the depiction of Corradino's castle, towers and dungeon is created through an all-purpose large double spiral staircase that remains static in place throughout, although it spins for effect at one or two key moments.

Decca's Blu-ray release of Matilde di Shabran looks and sounds pretty good in High Definition. The Blu-ray is region free, full-HD, with subtitles in Italian, English, French and German. The enclosed booklet includes a full track-by-track synopsis (which is more than the plot merits), and there is an essay on the creation of the work, although I'm not sure about the claim that this work conforms to the opera semiseria style. There are no extra features on the actual disc, but you have an entertaining three and a half hour opera here, with extraordinary performances and a solid presentation.